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I actually agree with Bostonian’s comment. If there’s a subset of Ivy admissions that relies on infusions of endowments for enrolment, call a spade a spade. The reason such honesty doesn’t exist is because those wealthy families who so strongly identify with Ivy status that they’re willing to buy it lack the self awareness to openly accept their progeny’s lack of genuine ability at face value, and the implications that carries about themselves. The value they get is plausible deniability to themselves. A rich, deluded idiot will, apparently, part with a lot of money to avoid reality.

"Delusion" may not play a large role. Some rich people may rationally believe that if they can buy their offspring a place at Harvard, the connections their children will make there will boost their careers or help them marry well. If you have say $100 million, are you deluded to prefer to have $99 million and a kid at a Harvard or Princeton, rather than State U?

Marry well? What does that even mean outside a gauche, mercenary lens? Do these schools offer weekenders on maximizing the ROI on your dowry, too? Good grief. Who thinks like that?!

In a word, yes, delusion factors in. Your statement encapsulates that nicely. A family with $100 million to its name has no business stepping on the throats of legitimate candidates to secure further privilege. Delusion? Of the highest order. Most good families who have earned their fortunes legitimately would be mortified to engage in such desperate, grasping antics. How humiliating.

Also, who are these socially unconnected families with wealth in the hundreds of millions? That doesn’t compute.

In case the case for delusion isn’t clear, here are further comments. The parent can’t produce a capable enough child to earn admission, so he/she greases the wheels to personally save face and supplants a more valuable candidate. Why? Because the adult child is still an extension of the parental ego, as is the child’s future “success”. If the parent is incapable of producing offspring that can earn the best fairly, what does that say about the parent, from the lens of a blighted ego...? Hence, the prestige premium, and the complicity of the school in not conspicuously outing rich parents for buying spaces for their uncompetitive children.

I still agree with you that they should be openly called bought seats.

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